Page 8 of Suite 7

I’ve stared at the same blueprint for an hour.

The Moretti Museum cantilever specifications sit open on my laptop screen. I’ve recalculated the steel beam loads three times, and each time my pen reaches the page, I see red lips and defiant blue eyes instead. Unacceptable.

I close the laptop with more force than necessary and move to the kitchen for water I don’t need.

Twenty hours since the argument in Sloane’s apartment. Twenty hours of it replaying without my permission.

The way she looked at me when I stepped too close. That sharp intake of breath. The challenge in her eyes: Then tell me. Prove it.

The pulse fluttering in her throat.

Thank god Sloane came out when she did. Before I did something catastrophic, like close that distance, take her face in my hands, and kiss her until all that fire had somewhere to go.

Last night I stood in a cold shower for twenty minutes. I braced my hands against the tile and stared at the ground until the water went from cold to something I stopped feeling. I ordered my body to cooperate.

Control doesn’t erase desire. It contains it.

My phone chimes.

From: Dominic Laurent

Subject: Potential Match: Review Requested

Kane,

I have a new member seeking a Dominant for her first guided experience. After reviewing her intake interview, I immediately thought of you. Forwarding the confidential evaluation.

For her first session she’s chosen a blindfold and guided entry.

If you’re interested, let me know by end of day.

— Dominic

I sit back and stare at the attachment Dominic added without opening it.

It’s been fourteen months since I put Margaux on a plane to Berlin, which is when it ended, the way things end when two people are honest with each other. She’d laid the residency letter on the kitchen table without a word and watched me read it, and I’d said take it without hesitation, because it was right and we both knew it.

The arrangement had been good. She trusted me cleanly, which isn’t a small thing to give someone. But she’d always been halfway there before I touched her — she came to submission already knowing its shape, already certain. She gave me her trust the way you hand someone something fragile: both hands, no hesitation. I held it carefully in return.

But careful isn’t the same as earned. What I want is the work of it.

A week after Margaux left, I went to see Dominic. Sat in his office for an hour, longer than I usually need, and he waited the way he does until I could say it clearly.

“I want someone with more fire,” I’d said. “A strong personality. Someone who doesn’t arrive already open. Someone I have to earn.”

Dominic had been quiet for a moment. Then: “You want the resistance.”

“I want what’s on the other side of the resistance,” I’d said. “When it’s real. When she’s chosen it, not defaulted to it.”

He’d nodded once, slowly. “I’ll keep you in mind. When the right one comes through, you’ll know.”

He’d sent six profiles since. I’d read each one with care and returned each one without being able to articulate, precisely, why. Only that the quality I’d described wasn’t there. The fire. The push. The weight of need that would require me to bring everything, because anything less would fail her.

I move to the couch and sit, forearms on my knees, and open the attachment.

Age: 29.

BDSM Experience: None (extensive research).